"It seemed very intriguing and we all knew that there was the possibility of making a very thrilling series out of space exploration and science fiction. But there was only one script. The truth is, on day one when we all went to Pinewood Studios to start shooting, neither Martin, nor Barbara, nor I or indeed anybody else had seen a script. To an old circus horse like me it was a bit ominous. I though 'Uh-oh..' The series was always a constant race against time. The result of that, in my view, was that not enough attention was paid to those small details of character and relationship which are the most important thing in a dramatic series.
I came up with the idea that Victor Bergman had come to England as a refugee child during the reign of the Nazis, and that he might have originally been Austrian or Czechoslovakian. I built up a whole character based on that, and the idea that, being somewhat older than almost all the other people on the space station, Professor Bergman could almost be described as a kind of space uncle.
I thought the quality of the writing and overall production in general really left a lot to be desired. An episode I thought was unusually effective was
The Black Sun. We pretty much improvised a good deal of that episode. I recall one particular scene where Martin Landau and I were sitting on the steps. That scene had a certain amount of human value- no explosions, just two human beings.
After a year and a half, the quality of our scripts I didn't feel had made the improvements that they could have. Gerry came to me and asked me about the future and told me that they were going to go on with a new producer whose name is
Fred Freiberger. Well, I had known Freddie in Hollywood in past times and he's an admirable fellow, I'm sure. He's kind to animals and writes regularly to his mother, but I didn't feel that, and he knows it, he was likely to improve the quality of the scripts either. So when Gerry asked if I wanted to go on and do however many shows there would be, and since the option was on my side, I simply said, Gerry, it's been lovely and I wish you all kinds of luck, but if it's all the same to you I'd just as soon like to go and play with the grown-ups for a while. I didn't mean to be unkind, but I just felt that a year and a half was enough. I've not seen any of the shows after that, so I don't know whether they were better or not, and it doesn't matter now. I enjoyed the time I spent with it, but I've always been a little disappointed that we didn't do it better for your sake."
